POLITICS The scale and extent of the George Floyd protests have encouraged lawmakers to act on the issue of racial injustice and police brutality. Politicians are far more likely to vote on an issue, especially in a positive manner, if they know their constituents are so angry about it that they have taken to the streets to demand change. Protest is necessary. For every day that these protests continue, for every person that joins in, for every news article that a politician sees about this issue, change becomes that much more likely to happen. The louder you get, the more likely they are to hear you. A single mass protest may not solve the issue immediately, it may not even
solve it fully but with enough momentum, the governments of the world have no choice but to start listening to the noise created. So, if you can, go out and protest to better your life, go out and protest to better the lives of others. It is one of the most important methods for creating change that any person has and with enough voices fighting to better the world, it might just become somewhat of a better place for all of us.1
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Polarization OWAIN CAMPTON It is incredibly difficult to tell if we are more polarised now than we ever have been before because we cannot accurately compare our current situation to that of the past. In the 70s our parents did not have even a tiny fraction of the available communication tools and networks that we have access to today. Facebook, Twitter, even the first 24-hour television news channel were not options to our parents, but they’re a constant part of life now. To debate the issues “back in the day” you had to buy a newspaper or listen to the six o’clock news, and then talk it over with your friends and family. What this meant was that typically you were speaking about the issues with less informa-
tion, and in an echo chamber with those of similar views. Still, to this day we flock into our own safe echo chambers, however, it is impossible to avoid the occasional troll and the doom thread where two sides of the arguments clash at length. We are exposed to a lot more political noise, which means it can seem that the world is completely divided, however, this seems more like a symptom of a world connected than a world in pieces. If during the 80s you brought a Welsh miner to meet a Thatcherite, I am sure you would have seen them have some choice words for each other they would never have seen eye to eye on issues of state. It is the same today, it is just a lot easier for the left and the right to meet.
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